


Dandelions and orange peels

by travellinghopefully



Series: Whouffaldi Week 2016 [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Fluffity fluff, Tooth Rotting Fluff, Whouffaldi Week 2016, insulin needed, whouffaldi, whouffaldi appreciation week 2k16
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-31
Updated: 2016-03-31
Packaged: 2018-05-30 08:57:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6417148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/travellinghopefully/pseuds/travellinghopefully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So, Whouffaldi appreciation week - yes I am late - but...</p><p>So, day 1 prompt - "not what it looks like", orange peels. bed covers </p><p>I wholeheartedly recommend checking out other writers fics in this tag</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dandelions and orange peels

Sitting unmoving, she could see his gaze was focused outwards, that was good, she didn’t worry when he was engaged in something, lost in a project. She only worried when she knew he was trapped inside himself, when horrors she didn’t want to imagine played on the inside of his eyes, when he weighed everything he’d ever done and always seemed to find himself wanting. Still she ran a hand through his hair, ruffling it, damp from the shower, so soft, but already warmed by the morning sun. She placed his mug of coffee close to him, within reach, but outside his general absent minded flailing range. She place her lips against his forehead, casual affection that she craved and he was just about at peace with.

“Morning.”

“Only just.”

“If you didn’t get up so insanely early.”

“If you weren’t a pudding brain and needed sleep.”

They both laughed. 

Clara loved the TARDIS, and they were never away from her from long, but she adored this – the joy of getting up, stepping outside their house (their house, their house), sitting on the ground in the back garden next to him, letting her head rest against him, not feeling him tense, not running from anything, not running towards something. Happy exactly where they were, with each other, Neither of them said as much, but the days here were more often, the racing away less urgent, he could tinker and potter and create and read anywhere, she could write, she’d written a lot, some of it published, even on earth. 

Nothing compared to the still moments, leaning back against his chest, his arms wrapped round her, as if that was their natural resting place. Warmth and tranquillity surrounding both of them, birds she couldn’t name singing in trees she didn’t recognise, the violet of one sun setting, mingling with the rose rays as another began to rise. He didn’t just spring up now, dragging her with him, telling her she had to see, or they should just pop to, she was astonished by how still he could be, that he wasn’t always her manic stick insect, she was dumbfounded and glad that he was a man who knew how to snuggle and would devote time without limits to just that. The first time his lips had brushed against the nape of her neck, she had been certain that it was merely wishful thinking – she had been so careful not to react, not to move, not to speak....that was long, long before she knew how loudly he heard her thoughts, sometimes still that gave her pause, and yes, caused her to blush. The mighty control freak, the Impossible Girl, yes, she blushed. She hoarded these moments, keeping them in a jewel box in her head, replaying them when he seemed still and cold and distant, when she couldn’t see him and definitely thought that he couldn’t see her.

His embraces, his caresses, his kisses had grown bolder, the intervals between, shorter, and it was glorious and she almost allowed herself to become accustomed to their new normal. She could hug him and not find him stiff and angular, his body recoiling and shrinking away from hers, but soft and warm, sinking into her embrace, pulling her closer, the sounds of contentment he made, her name said, his lips pressed into the hair by her ear, the intonation never failing to make her shiver. This, their domesticity hadn’t palled, she found the music wasn’t just a fad, she found he drew and painted too, all of them of her, he said the songs were too. 

He pulled her closer, wrapping his arms round her, interlacing his fingers, low against her stomach, resting his chin against her shoulder, rubbing his face against hers, for all the world like a giant pussy cat. It had taken her, it seemed longer than forever, to recognise it as a psychic embrace, much as her gran used to tap her barometer, the Doctor checked her well being, reassured himself. Longer, far longer than that and she heard the words of love he greeted her with, showered over her. She had thought he was the noisy one, the busy one, the distant one, and it had been her that wasn’t listening. She had still pouted and grumbled and then blushed at the memory of that too, when she had berated him for not saying the words out loud, until the realisation had settled over her, that it really was a foreign language, nothing could translate the love he had for her. He said it every way he could (even the words themselves), he showed her a 1000 different ways, but it was only when she finally deciphered, opened herself up to his touches against her, that she realised the depth of his love, realised it was her saying nothing in return. And he had taken her in his arms then and told her he heard her, he saw her, and she had blushed knowing everything she had relayed, unfiltered. He’d kissed her and called her “Impossible” and she had been on the edge of her customary rebuke, and they had kept kissing, her hands lost in his hair, holding him against her, slow dawning realisation, he had no intention of being anywhere else, he wasn’t moving, he wasn’t pulling away, he was exactly where he intended, wanted to be. Exploring the warmth of him, the softness of him, the gentleness of him, dazed that he could be so unhurried, as his fingertips, as his lips mapped every inch of her, as she writhed, as she urged him, as he shushed her, as he held her hands and continued as if time was theirs.

She had drifted off in his embrace, a soft breeze woke her, with scents of what she supposed or like to think of as Spring. They had planted, well, she had planted bulbs, he had watched and made suggestions and point blank refused the concept of anything that could be considered a lawn. He had created something or other around their home preventing any possible contamination of local plants or animals by anything in their garden – somehow it didn’t stop plants and animals coming in, it just protected them, a quarantine he called it. She had asked him about rearranging the rain, he had actually considered it for some time, until she was compelled to say that she had been joking, knowing perfectly well that plants needed rain. She found he was just as content as she to lay in bed, their arms around each other, watching the rain run down the windows. However far her imagination had gone, and she prided herself on its vividness, she had never contemplated, never imagined whole days of lying in his arms, the smell of him filling her senses, running her fingers through his hair, quiet meandering conversations about nothing and everything. Until the inevitable, the grumbling of his stomach. She was surprised to find he did eat, and did sleep, he had one word for her, “linear”. He had slept and had eaten and laundry too (he really did, she had always thought it was the TARDIS), his ironing was a wonder to behold, all of it in the moments in between, he had wanted nothing stealing him from the moments he shared with her, he deferred everything else in his life. She realised she had been missing the best bits, how had she ever only given him Wednesdays? They had both cried when she stopped leaving, when it dawned on her that her only home was him, the only place she wanted to be. The greatest adventure his lips against hers, the only galaxies the ones in his eyes – he had threatened a month without romantic fiction for that thought – she had kissed him, and found the sweet spot just below his ear, the point where if she sucked just right, if she grazed the skin just so with her teeth, she knew she could stop him thinking all together, he praised her extensively for her sound and valid reasoning, hours later, when he remembered how to use words again.

“What ya doin?”

Her words were a little slurred, her mouth and mind heavy with sleep. 

“Looking.”

He pointed at a dandelion. 

She would have shrugged, she would have simply smiled, but his mind opened against hers, showing her the depth of colour, the perfection of yellow and gold, the iridescence to his eyes, the intricacies of overlapping whorls, the tiny insects, all the things he saw that made it not just a dandelion.

“Thinking about you.”

He turned her around to kiss her.

“How wonderful and incredible you are to me, and how much I love you.”

The words to him, were never enough, devoid of the layers of meaning he wanted to convey, but he knew she wanted to hear them, he built moments into every day, making sure to say them aloud, making sure she knew he meant them. He kissed her again, and she snuggled further forward into his embrace, her forehead against his.

“Care to explain?”

“What?”

“The orange peels, the bed covers?”

“It’s not what it looks like.”

“They’re not orange peels?”

“No they are.”

“What does it look like then?”

“I was eating an orange, several oranges. Several oranges in bed, you have to peel them to eat them. Orange, orange peel, bed covers, see, explained.”

“Its not that you’re a neat freak, oh wait, that’s exactly it. I’m lucky if you haven’t washed my mug before I’ve had the drink.”

“We’ve been over that, 2 days is a more than acceptable time limit within which to have finished a drink.”

“So you say. I say I was waiting to see what would colonise the mug, and it isn’t as if we don’t have an almost infinite quantity of mugs.”

“You always drink out of the “I hate Mondays” one...with Garfield on...”

“You always drink out of the “Best Teacher” one.”

“That’s not relevant.”

“No, its not. So, Miss Neat Freak, bed, orange peel! You won’t even let me have a biscuit in bed, no don’t start about the crumbs or the chocolate, it was one packet, one time, and yes it went everywhere, but if memory serves me correctly, you didn’t exactly object to chocolate covered Time Lord.”

He may have smirked, she still wasn’t sure if that was irresistible or infuriating, generally she accepted that both were entirely true.

“You are distracting me.”

She might have wiggled, just a little at the memory.

“Me, distracting you? Its you rambling about dandelions and oranges.”

He kissed her, she mumbled.

“I didn’t say anything about minding being distracted.”

Time passed, birds sang, plants grew.

“Oranges?”

She swatted him.

“I just really fancied eating an orange.”

“And didn’t tidy up? After a battle, our clothes tattered, bloodied, charred even, you go back and pick them up off the floor wherever we’ve dropped them, no matter whatever else we might be doing.”

He slid a finger over her chest, still flushed, the sweat drying in the breeze, warm enough with his arms around her.

“Yes.”

“Yes! What kind of answer is yes?”

“The one to the question you just asked.”

“Yes is not an explanation. Do you think....?”

And he stopped.

“Do you think....?”

And he stopped again.

“doyouthinkyoumightbepregnant?”

“WHAT?”

She almost toppled backwards out of his arms.

“No, that’s silly. Of course I’m not pregnant. I ate oranges, why would you even think I’m pregnant.”

She was babbling, she knew she was babbling, she ignored his fingers tracing patterns over her stomach. She wasn’t pregnant, she couldn’t be pregnant, ah well, it was entirely possible she was pregnant. Was that even a thing though? 

Could they? 

Could he?

Could she?

Well they had, well, it was theoretically entirely possible. She had her hand over her mouth, he was speaking, all of him, and she hadn’t heard a word. She was trying to decide on what she was feeling, panic and panic and excitement and panic and fear and panic. They would be dreadful parents. They would be amazing parents. She felt joy – she squeezed that down, she wasn’t pregnant, she had just really wanted an orange, lots of oranges, for days all she had imagined were oranges. She had climbed out of bed, disentangling herself from his embrace, unravelling sheets and arms and legs and she had brought oranges back to bed. She had eaten more when she had finally woken. Oranges were healthy, a great source of vitamin C, one of her five a day or seven a day or whatever improbable number of healthy things it was that she was meant to eat in a day. It wouldn’t hurt him to eat the occasional piece of fruit, whatever his irrational thoughts about pears. She still hadn’t answered him.

“I can check.” 

He looked hopeful, he waved his sonic at her, she giggled, lost in thoughts of exactly where he had managed to just pull it from. His eyebrows twitched, any pretence of the old, huffy, angry him was entirely defused by the twinkle in his eyes, the smile quirking around his lips.

“I’m not pregnant!”

He fiddled with the settings, the sonic glowed and blinked and whirred and did whatever it did. Clara realised it perhaps wasn’t the time to mention she really had rather liked the sunglasses.

He was smiling so hard, tears spilling from his eyes, coursing over his cheeks, and she didn’t need to hear what he was saying.

“It’s exactly what it looks like Mrs Oswald, you...”

He paused, his voice caught, he rested his head against hers, pouring her love, his admiration into her, a whisper of his own terror, his delight his joy.

“you....WE! are pregnant.”

**Author's Note:**

> As always
> 
> Hated this - please tell me
> 
> Loved this - please tell me
> 
> Really loved this - please share
> 
> Insulin is available in the gift shop on the way out


End file.
